I have steering knuckles off of my Dart so just a lower control arm with lower ball joint still attached. One of the ball joints has a ripped dust rubber, and puking grease. The joint rotates & moves rather freely, but I can’t feel any looseness while manhandling it in X or Y axis.

Is there another way to determine if the joint should be changed, or should I just replace its dust cup? The dang things are made of gold or at the least; depleted uranium… at 64 bucks and up.

Bill

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67' Dart GT Convertible; the old Chrysler Corp.
82' LeBaron Convertible; the new Chrysler Corp
07' 300 C AWD; Now by Fiat, the old new Chrysler LLC

What about the Z direction?


Got an arbor press, see if it compresses.

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Ed
64 Valiant 225 / 904 / 42:1 manual steering / 9" drum brakes

Clean it good, replace the dust cap, fill up with grease and test drive. It can't be worse than it was before you noticed the rip!

Olaf.

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Aspenized

Yes, check for Z-axis play too, but it's probably fine and only needs dust seal.

My 2 cents: $50 is what a good balljoint cost 15+ years ago, so I would call $64 too cheap these days for it to be any good. Nowadays, I am always looking for the most expensive maintenance parts I can find so they are not crap that will fall apart in 10k miles... Last balljoints I bought were Spicer professional (IIRC) for about $75 each from Just Suspension. Looked like a nice part. Last Moog ones I bought in 1999 only lasted 40k miles - pitiful.

Lou

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